"Game" and "Signals" Take Top Honors At Inaugural San Diego World Film Festival

"Game" and "Signals" Take Top Honors At Inaugural San Diego World Film Festival

"Game" and "Signals" Take Top Honors At Inaugural SanDiego World Film Festival

by Michael Wechsler and Richard Keefe

The first San Diego World Film Festival wrapped on June 11th after tendays of screening over 80 independent, studio and foreign films. Asbefitted a festival with an Honorary Advisory Board that included bothindependent director John Sayles and Sony Pictures CEO John Calley, theFestival was an eclectic blend of indie films and special advancescreenings of studio product (such as “The Truman Show“). According toFestival Director Jo Moulton, “We wanted to come up with a festivalformat that was unique, that recognized talent of all types and broughtthem together, without distinguishing between the A and B list. At ourawards gala, we had one table with student directors, low-budget featuredirectors and the legendary John Frankenheimer all sitting together.”

Winning the Audience Award for Best Independent Feature was Chris verWiel’s lyrical life/death allegory, “The Waiting Game.” Chris Eyre’s“Smoke Signals” took top jury honors, receiving awards for Best Actor,Screenplay, Director and American Independent Feature. Tony Gatlif’s“Gadjo Dilo” won for Best Foreign Film while a special jury award wasgiven to Phillipe De Broca’s “En Garde” as well as Andres Heinz’s“Origin of the Species.” Corky Quackenbush’s “Reinfather” won for BestShort while Rick Wilkinson’s “A Short Wait Between Trains” and PatrickYu’s “A Spider’s Thread” tied for Best Student Film. Val Keller’s“Winged” won the audience award for Best Student Film while DavidDeblinger’s “The Callback” won the audience award for best short.

Festival highlights included the lifetime achievement awards given toactor Martin Landau and director John Frankenheimer; a boating regattafor the filmmakers; a special screening of “The Manchurian Candidate“followed by a Q & A with director Frankenheimer; a talk about indiepublicity with legendary film producer Samuel Z. Arkoff (“I Was ATeenage Werewolf,” “Blacula“) and a discussion on film editing withPeter Hones (editor of “LA Confidential“).

For all it’s diverse programming and events, the festival wasn’t withoutit’s problems and shortcomings. The complete absence of local presscoverage and the lack of support in promotions was a disappointment toindie filmmakers who had to hawk their movies on the street to fill upthe theaters. On a less important, but certainly significant note, thethree gala parties touted at $100-$200/person had cash bars. To addinsult to injury, there were barely any mixers for the filmmakers whichis almost unbelievable in the Gaslamp district known for it’s hip bars,restaurants and dance clubs.

And last but not least, the “equality factor”. Although this wassupposed to be a festival where everyone was on equal footing, thatcertainly didn’t seem to be the case when CNN, ET and Access Hollywoodcamera’s were invited to the glitzier, star-driven screenings whilesmaller indie fare was left out in the cold.

The above rantings notwithstanding, the festival still came off quiteimpressively for it’s Freshman year and seems like it’s here to stay.Once the festival addresses it’s “growing pains” it could become aserious indie alternative to Los Angeles’ growing festival monopoly.

[Michael Wechsler and Terry Keefe are the filmmakers behind “Slaves ofHollywood”, which screened at the festival.]